Observations on the Habits of the Rook. lol 



damaged the grass to such a fearful extent, that, in 1749, the 

 rash colonists were obliged to procure hay from Pennsylvania, 

 and even from England. Buffon mentions that grakles were 

 brought from India to Bourbon, in order to exterminate the 

 grasshoppers. The colonists, seeing these birds busy in the 

 new-sown fields, fancied that they were searching for grain, 

 and instantly gave the alarm. The poor grakles were pro- 

 scribed by government, and in two hours after the sentence 

 was passed, not a grakle remained in the island. The grass- 

 hoppers again got the ascendency, and then the deluded 

 islanders began to mourn for the loss of their grakles. The 

 governor procured four of these birds from India, about eight 

 years after their proscription, and the state took charge of 

 their preservation. Laws' were immediately framed for their 

 protection ; and, lest the people should have a hankering for 

 grakle pie, the physicians were instructed to proclaim the 

 flesh of the grakle very unwholesome food. Whenever I see 

 a flock of rooks at work in a turnip field, which, in dry wea- 

 ther, is often the case, I know that they have not assembled 

 there to eat either the turnips or the tops, but that they are 

 employed in picking out a grub, which has already made a 

 lodgement in the turnip. 



Last spring, I paid a visit, once a day, to a carrion crow's 

 nest on the top of a fir tree. In the course of the morn- 

 ing in which she had laid her fifth egg, I took all the 

 eggs out of the nest, and in their place I put two rooks* 

 eggs, which were within six days of being hatched. The 

 carrion crow attended on the stranger eggs, just as though 

 they had been her own, and she raised the young of them 

 with parental care. When they had become sufficiently large, 

 I took them out of the nest, and carried them home. One of 

 them was sent up to the gamekeeper's house, with proper 

 instructions ; the other remained with me. Just at this time 

 an old woman had made me a present of a barn-door hen, 

 " Take it, Sir," said she, " and welcome ; for, if it stays here 

 any longer, we shall be obliged to kill it. When we get up to 

 wash in the morning, it crows like a cock. All its feathers 

 are getting like those of a cock ; it is high time that it was 

 put out of the way, for when hens turn cocks people say that 

 they are known to be very unlucky ; and, if this thing is 

 allowed to live, we don't know what may happen. It has 

 great spurs on its legs, and last summer it laid four eggs. If 

 I had had my own way, it would have- been killed when it 

 first began to crow." I received the hen with abundant 

 thanks ; and, in return, I sent the old woman a full-bred 

 Malay fowl. On examining the hen, I found her comb very 



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